


Five Things That Never Happened to D

by Dusk



Category: Pet Shop of Horrors
Genre: 5 Things, AU, Dark, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-17
Updated: 2011-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-27 10:46:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/294964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dusk/pseuds/Dusk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An unhappy AU, or how D learned to be the son of his father.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Things That Never Happened to D

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted as commentfic on LJ, 03/02/08.

1) D doesn't remember much of his earliest years. His father was never suited to parenthood and for the most part made no impression on him positively or otherwise, as unremarkable and taken for granted as the mountains and the sky. Nor did he ever have any expectation that there should be other children - one of his earliest lessons, the few instilled with unshakable, terrible insistence, was that there were no others. Just them. If he wanted playthings, then animals were far more appropriate to his station. His father introduced him to a young fox and left them to it. There were endless parade of animals in and out of his life, many he'd never heard of until his father made him make his bow in greeting, and it was some time before he realised that one animal was often mentioned but never made an appearance.

The look in his father's eye when he asked *why* humans were less worthy than other animals is very clear, lifetimes later, as is what followed. In his short life, he had never been touched in anger, and the sharpness of the pain, the suddenness of the beating shocked him almost as much as seeing his father so shaken from his perfect self control.

It was shortly after that that his grandfather took him away. He didn't connect the two events until years later, when he realised that it was all the answer his father had been capable of.

...oOo... 

 

2) His grandfather was the image of his father, so much that when he woke in the night and looked over at him, he was often uncertain which he looked at, until the figure looked over with golden eyes, so different from the dark purple of his father. His grandfather made a much better father, understanding that if he asked something inappropriate it was out of ignorance, which could be cured. Even so, he resolved not to ask the question again until he understood why his father had been so angry. His grandfather taught him through conversation and example, countless tiny lessons he took in without realising, and he came to understand that it was humans who had seen to it that there were no others of his kind.  
He still struggled with the question on his own, because he had with his own eyes seen a big cat destroy far, far more than it could eat and then be forced to move on through lack of food, and he thought it was because he was still young that he could not see the difference.

He became quite certain that there was something about humans that he was not being told, and when he got the chance he walked miles and miles down the path to a village he'd seen from the mountaintop and set up a hide, to watch them unseen as he'd been taught to watch any nervous, unpredictable animal. For a while it worked, until a child saw him and called for him to join in their games, and as he had with countless litters of dogs and foxes and kittens before, he went to them.

His grandfather appeared that evening and removed him with an apology to the mother who had kept an idle eye on the group, and there was a firmness in the way his grandfather gripped his arm as they went home that made him realise that, in his own way, his grandfather was as capable of anger as his father.

...oOo... 

 

3) There was no beating, no raised voices, not even the solemn discussion he'd expected about why his behaviour had disappointed. Instead, his grandfather moved them away from the mountain and the village and opened - reopened, he found later - the petshop in a corner of a distant city. He gave D a grown wolfhound to be his friend and, he quickly discovered, his chaperone. If D was so determined to see humans, then he could do so, his grandfather said, and let him sit in when customers came, see their vanities and foolishness and meanness, let him help orchestrate their comeuppance. The customers found it charming that he helped them select their new pets so gravely and seriously; it was the first responsibility his grandfather had given him and he was determined not to disappoint him again.

One day a girl came in with her mother, very close to his age, and she smiled shyly at him from behind her mother's skirts. He selected a fine cheetah for them, matched well to the mother's perfect looks and careless cruelty, and they went away thrilled with his choice. The cheetah came back less than a week later on her own, still licking blood off of her whiskers. The girl had been far tenderer than the mother, she said, liver aside.  
D found himself wondering what the girl had done to earn the same punishment as her mother.

...oOo... 

 

4) Time passed, he grew up, and they moved the shop every few years. First he played the son of his grandfather, then his younger brother, until it came that they could look in a mirror and, save their eyes and hair, pass for twins. His grandfather gave him the shop and offered him a choice - become the count, or remain himself, grandson of an absent ancestor. The first would take rather more than growing his hair and though he was sure he could stand on his own, he was less certain he could do so in such mighty shoes, and he chose to be, for the first time in many years, himself. The shop, he was told, would teach him as he taught lessons to those who came to him; give him a window into his duty. The first few days were heady and strange as he took possession of his domain; this quickly gave way to an unsettling loneliness as he began to feel, rather than simply know, what it was to be the last. His grandfather intended to travel beyond the reach of easy communication and his father was still out there somewhere, but it was a large world, larger than he'd realised, and in their absence they did not feel like his allies. A week later a package arrived from his grandfather and he opened it to find a winged rabbit, something he'd never seen before, with a note in its paw saying that his grandfather hoped it would keep him company.

Q-chan became his constant companion after that, and he felt like part of his small, strange family was somehow still with him.

Q-chan, in fact, was very much like his grandfather and tutted and scolded when D was not sufficiently harsh with those who came to him, and in the end D had to explain, very firmly, that his views were not welcome.

D did not understand until much later why Q-chan took such a dislike to Detective Orcot, and warned D so firmly against letting him leave the shop unharmed.

...oOo... 

5) D knew, on some level, that Q-chan was right, because it was as a result of his visits that that old question resurfaced, and by training and experience he should easily have been able to answer it. The Dectective was a threat to his peace of mind, to his duty - not his silly threats of arrests and prison, but his presence, which embodied many of the traits D was honour-bound to punish and also many that, in other animals, he had been taught to revere. Again it was the difference between knowing a thing and experiencing it, and he understood why his honoured ancestors had wanted to keep him away from humans. He determined the manner of Leon's death a dozen times, and rescinded it as often, claiming to himself and to Q-chan that each method was too fast, too mild a punishment, too generous. When Leon found himself saddled with a younger brother and no way to care for the child, D accepted his care because he felt that this, above all, would prove to him that humans were beyond redemption, selfish and cruel and unworthy of life from the moment of birth.

Self-deception was an art he had worked hard to perfect, had had to in order to perform his duties as he was obliged to do so, and he was good enough at it that even he didn't realise that he'd hoped to be proved wrong, not right. Chris, at seven, was no different from the puppies and fledglings he played with so comfortably. D told himself he could not act, that the younger brother of a police officer disappearing would bring too much attention on his shop, so he bided his time until the day came when Chris was returned to his family.

It was, he knew, the mistake his grandfather had always insisted it would be to get to know humans, though for exactly the opposite reason - they confused what his race's history, its extermination, insisted should be a very clear issue.

When the time came he smiled and sat Leon down with some tea and excused himself, leaving him alone with T-chan, lulled into false security by the beast's previous obedience to D's orders. D went into the back of the shop and walked until he found a beach, empty and moonlit, where he sat and listened to the surf until T-chan came, smug and satiated. D made him go into the sea and wash the blood off before he could bring himself to look at the totestsu, a creature acting purely as his nature dictated, which was a priviledge only animals were allowed to enjoy without repercussions.

The next day he moved the shop out of America, and did not return.


End file.
